Dark Matter

Peter’s dreams are, as usual, vivid affairs that he won’t remember clearly. He’s walking on top of a nearly invisible bridge suspended in the air. He’s walking alongside a dead god, following him into a black storm. Loki is thoughtful and withdrawn, and Peter is confused. This isn’t like his usual dreams at all. Most of his dreams these days involve him sneaking through alleys and across rooftops, evading panthers or falcons or wolves. He’s not even sure that’s right; dreams seem to function more on symbolism than the real thing sometimes.

“Have you thought about what’s happened to you?” Loki asks finally, breaking the silence. His words cut through the wind and rain.

“What?” Peter asks.

Loki aims an unamused look at Peter. “You’ve died. A few times, in fact, though I don’t think you remember them well.”

“Well, yeah,” Peter says, shoving his hands into his pockets. He pauses, frowning. “Wait. A few times?”

“I believe the final count was four, though I admit I lost count after a certain point. It was becoming rather tedious. Your captors were incapable of handling the machine they created,” Loki says. “We all witnessed it.”

Peter isn’t sure what to make of that. He’s very sure he doesn’t want to think about it much, and shoves away at the half remembered nightmares of a machine full of green liquid that linger at the edges of his mind. He focuses instead on following Loki across the flickering rainbow path, taking in the sights and sounds of this strange place. The air is frigid; cold in the way the air becomes just before a storm rolls in. The clouds above rumble threateningly, swirling violently, with distant rumbles of thunder following brief flashes of light within them.

Loki is watching him from the corner of his eye, clearly waiting for Peter to respond. Peter sighs. “So?”

“There are consequences for that. You are not allowed to die and come back the same. I certainly haven’t been the same after every death,” Loki explains, using a tone one would save for a particularly slow child. Peter frowns at him, annoyed. “That goes double for a mortal creature like yourself. Were it not for the Stone and the others, you would be nothing more than a wounded, maddened beast.”

Peter considers that. Is that why his temper has been so touchy lately? Is it going to get worse? Has it been getting worse? He can’t tell.

Loki pauses for a moment, and then adds, “Well. With the exception of the Panther, perhaps. Kings are almost always the exception, aren’t they? And he seems like a good King. One that nurtures rather than conquers. I would have loved to see him meet my father.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Peter says. “Where are we going?”

“To visit my brother,” Loki says, as if that’s possible in the slightest. "He has prophetic dreams. Flashes of things to come. A gift from our mother, and one wasted on him, if you ask me.”

“I didn’t,” Peter says.

“You’re in my soul, spider, you don’t get to counter my opinions,” Loki replies dryly.

Peter rolls his eyes, but stays silent. He might as well be polite.

The thunder grows louder, sharper, all encompassing. The storm reaches a fever pitch of violence, and the wind hits them fully. Loki withstands it just fine. Peter is soaked to the bone immediately, bending against the wind and rain, shielding his face against hailstones buffeting around him. Without the subtle glow of the rainbow path beneath his feet, he would be lost to the storm.

“Thor’s mind is a stormy place these days,” Loki remarks. He stops then, standing on top of the rainbow bridge suspended in the storm and looks at Peter. “We’re here. If you get lost, find the red thread and follow it back to your body.”

Peter can barely hear him over the storm. “What?”

“Good luck, spider,” Loki says. “You won’t remember this in the morning, I’m afraid.”

The rainbow bridge disintegrates beneath Peter’s feet, and he falls into the storm with a startled yelp. He’s tossed by wind, rain, and hail, and lands in a heap on a smooth city street. The wind is knocked out of him, and he struggles to stand against the storm. He’s standing in a city he doesn’t recognize, one that shines even in the dark storm. He’s taller, stronger, and wearing a suit he doesn’t recognize; a sleek black thing with blue accents and a red and gold spider etched across the chest. Captain America’s shield rests on the ground beside him, gleaming even in the dim light of the storm.

A terrified scream breaks through the storm. Peter’s head snaps towards the source of it and finds himself staring at a blue-black tear in reality in the middle of the street. Demons and darkness pour through it, leaping for innocent people standing nearby. Most of them don’t stand a chance and die before they realize they’re under attack.

Peter snatches up the shield and charges into the fray. He flings the shield at the nearest demon, leaps into the air, and then kicks it towards another demon closing in on a terrified teenager. He switches off between fists, kicks, and shield throws, drawing the monster horde’s attention towards himself so people can escape. He somehow manages it, but he can’t keep this up forever.

His lungs are on fire. His arms are trembling with the effort it takes to keep them up, and every time he catches the shield, it seems to grow heavier. His hits become sloppy, and once the first monster hits him, the rest pile on like starving wolves. If not for his suit--made from materials he definitely doesn’t have available at the moment--he’d be torn apart. The most he can do is brace himself against the tide of fangs and claws.

A roar like thunder cuts through the din, and white blue lightning follows, blinding Peter as it flashes above and across him. It incinerates the nearest monsters, violently throws back others, and then Thor is there, wielding an axe as big as Peter, crushing three unlucky monsters that get too close in one massive swing.

“On your feet!” Thor orders, fighting back the horde to give Peter room.

Peter scrambles onto his feet, hefting the shield up and taking up a place back to back with Thor. The monsters recover from their shock and charge in again. Peter is clumsy with the shield now. His exhaustion is overwhelming, as is his confusion.

Which is why he doesn’t see the goblin faced creature wearing the armor of Thanos’s Black Order until he feels the spear pierce his heart. Peter doesn’t even have time to scream. His vision goes dark at the edges as he stares at the spear and the creature wielding it in blatant confusion.

The dream, or vision, fades with Thor’s furious scream as he’s left alone to fight the oncoming horde. Peter wants to apologize, to stay and help, but his vision fades to black. He’s left in a black void, alone save for a single red thread leading into the dark.

He stands in the dark, then picks up the red thread.

It yanks him into the void.

* * *

Thor Odinson snaps awake, landing on his feet with a full throated snarl. He grips Stormbreaker in one hand and summons a roll of lightning across the other, clenching his fist tight enough to crack his knuckles. His body tenses, ready to face the nearest foe--

There are no foes here. Not in the Avengers Compound. Only the others, who stare at him in shock or with concern.

He blinks, lowering Stormbreaker.

“Thor,” Natasha says, her stance wary. She’s standing beside Steve, Clint, and Rhodey, the four of them looking at him from the holographic table projecting an image of the galaxy. A blood red blob covers a significant portion of it. The army Thanos has been gathering ever since he devastated the universe. “Are you all right?”

Thor is quiet for a long moment, bringing himself back from the blood tinged dream and forcing his breath to even out. Finally, he says, “I think I’ve just had a vision.”

As he says that, an orange red portal rips itself open at the far end of the room, and a blonde haired man in a brown trenchcoat falls through with a litany of curses. He lays on the floor for a long moment, then sits up, groaning in pain. He looks exhausted, as if he’s just been dragged across storm tossed seas behind a tugboat; his coat is singed in places, torn in others, and utterly wrecked. Cuts and bruises cover every bare inch of skin visible to the naked eye, and thin trickles of blood trail down his face. He aims a wide eyed, shaken look at the others.

"'Follow the red thread', he says. 'It's the best time to cross over', he says. 'You won't get torn apart by the void storms separating universes!' Bullocks. I am never doing a favor for your bloody sorcerer ever again," the man says in a thick British accent, his voice wavering. And then he sways in place, grows pale, and collapses back onto the floor, unconscious.

For a moment, no one moves, and the next, chaos. Rhodey and Steve are at the fallen man’s side in an instant, checking his vitals. Natasha leaves them to it, alerting the medical staff in the Compound before queing up a call to Wong in New York City on her personal holophone. Wong answers after the second ring, and Natasha steps into her office to speak with him in relative privacy.

Thor and Clint are left to themselves, at a loss as Steve and Rhodey grab the man and bodily haul him towards the elevators, leaving the two men alone. A prolonged silence follows.

Finally, Clint rubs his eyes and sighs.

"What the fuck just happened?" Clint asks.

* * *

Peter wakes up cold, stiff, and weak. It takes him a long time to recognize where he is, and even longer than that to realize how thirsty and hungry he is. He blinks up at the tarp hanging above his bed and then rolls over to look at the alarm clock he built, tapping at it with a hand that only half feels like his own. The STARK lights up, followed by the time. He squints, then sighs. He’s been asleep for a little over sixteen hours. He staggers up, moving drunkenly, as if he’s not fully aware of his own limbs. He tilts to the left, then to the right, and catches himself against the wall.

"Easy, Peter," Bucky says. "You’re trying to move too fast."

"Take it slow," Shuri says.

Right. One step at a time. Peter steadies himself, then walks slowly towards the bathroom, taking each step with the same level of caution one would use while walking across an ice covered parking lot. He finally makes it to the bathroom and staggers inside to deal with all of that nonsense. The murmured conversations are back, and he’s unbelievably grateful for it, listening to them through the wall while he showers.

“Where’s Loki?” Hill asks.

“In his own soul,” Wanda answers. “He’s diminished. Not as strong as he was. I think he needs to recover.”

“Dr. Strange is off in his own world, too,” Fury notes.

“Like always,” Quill mutters.

“He was the one who pulled Peter back to his body,” T’Challa says.

“He was doing more than that. Something followed Peter and Loki, and something else came back with him. Bucky and I saw it,” Sam says.

Peter walks back into the main room after his frigid shower, toweling off his hair. Despite sleeping for most of the day, he’s exhausted, and sore, as if he’s fought off every mugger in Gotham City twice over without a break. He stops and considers his suit, debating going out on patrol.

“No.”

So many people say it that Peter can’t tell who says it first. He decides to listen to them, however, and settles for a night in with his tattered copy of Watership Down and half of his food stores. He’ll buy more food tomorrow before patrol.

This time when he sleeps, it’s peaceful and dreamless.

* * *

He’s back in full form by the next day, and swings out for an early patrol. He makes a habit of swinging by the playground whenever he can. He just hovers nearby, occasionally using a web to catch a ball bouncing into the street to sling it back to the kids playing basketball or kickball. He doesn’t stay long, usually, but he does check in when he can. Most of the kids wave or shout his name when he swings by (and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t preen a bit at that), but usually they’re too busy playing to notice when he drops down on top of streetlight or balances himself against the wall of the building.

Today, he swings by early in his shift. And finds Nightwing showing off to a group of kids in the basketball court. He’s teaching them how to do a handstand or a cartwheel, much to the kids’ delight. Peter drops down on his usual spot, a light pole near the center of the playground, and watches. Nightwing catches sight of him, grins, excuses himself from the group of kids, and effortlessly launches himself up onto a ledge near Peter.

"Hey, Spider-Man! I hoped I'd find you here," he says.

Peter grins. “Trying to steal my turf, Nightwing?”

“Hardly. I came looking for you. I could use some help tonight if you’re free,” Nightwing says.

Peter tilts his head. “I’m free. What’s up?”

Nightwing motions for Peter to follow him, and then leaps into the air, swinging towards the Bowery. He waits until Peter catches up to him and says, “We’re going to take a look at Gotham Power’s headquarters to figure out what caused that power outage the other day.”

“Do you have any leads?” Peter asks.

“A few, but I’d like to see what you find out,” Nightwing says. “It never hurts to have an outside perspective.”

* * *

Nightwing takes him to a few substations on their way to the power station. Five of them, in fact. Every last one is damaged in some way; one torn apart as if by massive claws, one blown apart, one expertly sabotaged, another destroyed by a hail of bullets, and the last one melted by acid (Peter could smell that one from three blocks away). The method is different for each one, and if the timeline Nightwing gives him is right, then all five substations plus the main station went out at the same time in a perfectly coordinated attack. After briefly looking over each one, Nightwing takes Peter to Gotham Power’s main station, slipping inside.

It’s little more than a fancy warehouse filled with silent machinery at the moment. The station has been touted as one of the most advanced in the nation, but it’s at least five years out of date by Peter’s standards. At least, until he sees the main reactor. It’s huge, taking up most of the room, with giant batteries, regulators, and monitoring stations taking up the rest.

“Is the station nuclear?” Peter asks. “I didn’t see any cooling towers outside.”

“No, not nuclear. Cleaner and safer than that, but the idea is the same. It’s a very powerful energy source created by Wayne Tech. The details are a little sketchy for me, but the elements involved just dissipate if they’re not kept stable,” Nightwing says. “It’s still ultimately a steam engine, though.”

Nightwing is standing back while Peter looks around the ruined station. Unlike the substations, this one looks completely intact. Peter can’t hear the faint buzz of electricity anywhere in the building. If it wasn’t for his enhanced vision, he’d be in the dark. He can see Nightwing’s outline in the far corner of the room, and the faint glow of his eyes through his mask, and leaps over to stick to the wall next to him. Nightwing, unlike Batman, is more curious than anything else by his wall crawling tendencies.

“So what do you think?” Nightwing asks.

“I think you’ve got a very well coordinated team of enhanced terrorists running around,” Peter says.

Nightwing tilts his head. “Enhanced?”

“Sorry, I meant meta. I forget you guys call them that here.”

“Huh. Never heard that term before,” Nightwing says. “Okay, so we have the who. What else?”

Peter looks around the room, looking over the giant steam turbine that sits silent and still, the pipes, the work stations. After a moment, he says, “This was a heist.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. They wanted something in the reactor,” Peter says, half to himself. He goes quiet, then uses a web to yank himself across the room to the empty reactor. He crawls across the surface of it, looking over every nook and cranny. He even pokes his head inside to take a look at the system of wires and cooling rods. “Huh. They stole something from inside here. What was it?”

He pops his head back out of the reactor to aim a curious look at Nightwing. The man shrugs. “The reactor is the heart of the system. There was a sort of focusing crystal inside that kept the system stable.”

“Like the quartz in a computer’s motherboard,” Peter says thoughtfully. “They used alternating current to vibrate the crystal and create a constant signal. And without it, the system falls apart. Not the best failsafe.”

“Maybe not, but it sits at the heart of a reactor channeling enough power to keep Gotham City running. Even if the station is fully powered down, there’s enough energy running through the crystal to vaporize anyone dumb enough to touch,” Nightwing points out. “Not that it stopped this crew, of course. But now we know what they were after.”

Peter squints, thinking. “Why would anyone need a giant crystal?”

“That’s the question we need to find out--” Nightwing starts.

Someone knocks something over with a muttered curse in the dark, and Nightwing and Peter go silent.

“Who’s there?” Nightwing calls out. “Show yourself--”

A crackling blast of electricity cuts off the rest of Nightwing’s words, illuminating the dark reactor room. Peter catches sight of a big man in an armored suit and oversized metallic gauntlets standing between two batteries at the far end of the room. His eyes are startlingly blue, almost unnaturally so. Nightwing dives out of the way of the energy blast.

“Hey, I think we’ve found our guy,” Peter calls out. “East end of the room, behind the batteries!”

The man screams, electricity tracing crackling lines across the surface of his suit. He draws one hand back before snapping it forward to send two deadly arcs of energy at Peter. Peter dodges it; leaping over to the opposite wall.

"He calls himself the Electricutioner," Nightwing adds helpfully.

"Gee, I wonder what his gimmick could possibly be," Peter says dryly.

"It's a mystery for the ages. Move high, I'll swing around and blindside him."

“You got it!” Peter says. He swings high, drawing the man’s attention to himself with a few shots of web fluid across the man’s gauntlets. It sticks wetly to his gauntlets. “Hey, ugly! Over here!”

“I am not ugly,” the man cries out in rage. “I am a harbinger of glorious purpose---”

“Where have I heard that line before,” Fury asks dryly.

The Electrocutioner doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. Nightwing comes from the shadows, swinging low. He drives both heels into the larger man’s side, sending him flying across the smooth cement floor and into one of the hulking batteries resting on a cement slab in the middle of the room. Nightwing lands near the man, walking towards him.

“No!” the man screams, pushing himself up. He presses one of his electric gauntlets against the side of the battery. Lightning crawls across the surface of his suit and into his gauntlet and the battery it’s pressed against. “I won’t fall here! I won’t disappoint him! Not until I’ve fulfilled my purpose!”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Bucky asks.

Peter’s spider senses go wild. The battery starts to glow with power, turning orange with heat and pressure. If that battery is made of any of a number of rare earth metals, this whole place will be full of toxic fumes on top of dangerous shrapnel in a matter of seconds. The Electrocutioner grins at Peter viciously, and then sprints away, leaving the ticking time bomb of the battery behind himself.

He makes a split second decision, shooting a web at the ceiling and then swinging down. He lowers his arm, calling out, “He’s going to blow it up! Grab my arm!”

Nightwing’s reaction is immediate. He grabs Peter’s arm and lets himself be carried away from the battery. He even helps Peter gain momentum with his swing, expertly adjusting his weight and adding his own swing to give them that last bit of speed they need to reach the exit. They swing through the double doors and slam them shut just before the explosion hits. The building rocks on its foundation but holds steady.

Peter looks at Nightwing. “So, that was fun.”

Nightwing sighs. “Looks like Gotham’s going to be connected to Metropolis’s power grid for a bit longer than initially thought. But at least we know who did it, even if the why is a mystery. Come on, let’s get out of here. HAZMAT and GCPD can handle the rest.”

* * *

Nightwing and Peter swing back towards Crime Alley. Peter doesn’t pay much attention to where they’re going until Nightwing leads them towards the fire station.

“Do you patrol this part of Crime Alley much?” Nightwing asks, landing on the rooftop near the fire station.

Peter drops down on the roof, looking around. “No, not really. This place is basically abandoned. I stick to the more populated areas.”

Nightwing nods, looking around the rooftop for a moment. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter says.

“Try and check in on this rooftop for me,” he says. “There’s a kid that comes up here sometimes. He’s going through something, but he won’t ask for help. He’s started avoiding me, too.”

“How do you figure?” Peter asks.

“He stopped coming to this roof right when I started making it a habit,” Nightwing says. “I’ve checked in on this roof every night since I first met him. Not at the same time, and only when I wasn’t being dragged all over Gotham, but I haven’t had a chance to talk to him much.”

“More than you’d think, pal,” Bucky says wryly.

“Uh, sure. I’ll talk to him if I ever see him up here,” Peter says.

“Thanks, Spidey. I appreciate it.”

They sit on the rooftop. Nightwing rests against the old HVAC system and Peter perches on top of it. He’s a little uncomfortable sitting on this rooftop as Spider-Man. This place is his favorite spot to sulk as Peter Parker, and it feels wrong to stand here with Nightwing. He lets his eyes roam across the roof, idly throwing out a web at something shining in the moonlight. He yanks it back and catches it in his hand, tearing it free of the webbing to look it over.

It’s his driver’s license. It must have fallen out of his pocket the other day. Peter is annoyed with himself for losing track of it. It's not really a valid license, not in this universe, but it still comes in handy every now and then.

"What's that?" Nightwing asks, peering over his shoulder.

"A driver's license. This guy must’ve dropped it up here at some point," Peter says, holding it up so Nightwing can see it. "I'll take it to a police station later."

Nightwing is laser focused on the driver's license. He takes it from Peter, looking it over, and squinting down at the picture. It isn’t one of Peter’s best pictures, but the puzzled frown on Nightwing’s face makes Peter nervous.

"Uh. You okay? Is this guy trouble or something?"

"Brilliant acting, Parker," Fury says.

Look, he’s trying, okay.

"No, no, he's not trouble," Nightwing says, distracted.

"Oh. What's so interesting about his driver's license?"

Nightwing is quiet for a moment, and then he says, "He has brown eyes in this picture. And his hair is different, but the picture is messed up. I can’t get a clear look at the color."

The way he says it is odd. "So? DMV cameras aren't the best. Especially in that part of Queens."

Nightwing considers the license for another moment, then pockets it. "I'll keep hold of this. I know a few of his friends. I can get this back to him."

Awkward. Peter can't argue against that without looking suspicious as all hell, though. "Sure, it's all yours."

Nightwing is about to say something more when thunder cracks across the sky. Some bright furious thing lances across the sky, red and gold. It casts a dim, ominous light across the city before disappearing over the horizon.

Nightwing sighs tiredly.

Peter says nothing. His senses are going mad, and the fear has him rooted to the spot. But he can’t quite articulate why.

“I better go find out what that was,” Nightwing says. “I’ll catch up with you later, Spider-Man.”

* * *

BATCHAT

Steph (11:30pm): did anyone else see that falling star? it lit up half the sky.

Tim (11:33pm): that’s weird. the next meteor shower isn’t due until next week

Oracle (11:38pm): Something just fell out of the sky and landed outside of Metropolis.

Oracle (11:43pm): Bruce is investigating.